Nairobi_Demon

I’m increasingly of the view that this season has gone pear shaped because of some fundamental mistakes in our season strategy. It’s starts with the game plan: 1. Gameplan - I suspect about one third or half way through the season we began to realise that we went too far in tweaking our game plan. I can’t remember when it started but from about round 9 or 10 onwards we started to see players regularly confused about whether they were playing for territory, pressing high, holding the ball, etc. This has to be on the Senior Coach as he would be the one setting the overarching strategy at this level but the over-reaction to last year’s performance and failure to execute relates to various second-order areas of coaching that are not directly Goodwin’s responsibility but flow from the overarching strategy (note I’m not calling for Goodwin to be sacked and personally I’m not really interested in that debate here - there are other threads for that). 2. High-performance program - We are simply not running over the ground like we should be at this time of year and have not been able to run out games for weeks. That’s partly because of our youth (see below) but even many of our senior players are struggling. I have two hypotheses here: either we misunderstand what fitness levels would be required to execute the new game plan and got the high-performance program wrong, or about mid-way through the season, when we realized we’d over corrected and we lost Trac, we realized we were unlikely to challenge this year and have adjusted our performance program to build for 2025 rather than taper off and peak in Aug-Sept 2024. 3. Skills - related to why it become clear we had over-reached on the new game plan, our skills development program has not delivered the desired and perhaps anticipated improvement in skills across the playing group and certainly not at the level required for the new game plan. 4. Midfield - our coaches still don’t seem to know who to move into the midfield. They therefore don’t know the strengths and weaknesses of our core midfield group and thus how to develop their midfield method. They clearly now seem to be experimenting with players in the middle (see last night’s game) and that can only be for next year (not this year). They have no cohesion - something Goodwin values. 5. Regeneration - I have two hypotheses here. Once we realized mid-season we were unlikely to challenge, we shifted to prioritising junior players rather than playing experienced players - a mini rebuild on the fly. This year we have consistently played Windsor, Howes, Tholstrup, Woewodin, Turner, AMW plus given a taste of AFL to Brown. This is too many for a side to carry, particularly when the game plan is changing. I also think this clear prioritisation of juniors players would have demotivated some of our more experienced but second tier players. Second, I think we’re also playing catch up on re-generation. We seemed to have a strategy in 2022 and arguably 2023 of always playing our best 22 rather than selecting our best 19 or 20 plus 2-3 of our best future prospects. In short, we prioritised challenging over re-generation and have sought to catch up this year, particularly from mid way through the season. 6. Motivation - the players don’t seem motivated and willing to put their bodies on the line (see last night’s missed tackles) because they know that the coaches know that we can’t challenge this year and they’re already looking to protect themselves for 2025. In short, and given the age of some of our star players like Gawn and May, I think we need to play the long game and focus on getting this team and our strategy right to re-bound and challenge in 2025 and build for 2026+.

Two questions chaps: I’m keen for the podcast to discuss Goody’s post-match press conference and particularly his theory of why our midfield performed so poorly. He was very unhappy! I increasingly suspect he is dissatisfied with our method, cohesion and thus coaching in the middle and around stoppages given he explicitly noted it wasn’t about players unavailable and in past weeks he has mentioned problems with our stoppage method. For those at the game and who regularly watch the players box, do you think Goody is conferring directly with the young stats chap on the bench more than in the past? In the past few games I’ve noticed on the TV him more regularly looking at the computer. It could be the cameras are covering this more because we’re not performing as well as in the past but I also wonder whether he’s not getting the analysis he needs from the coaches box.

Two questions: 1. Two good quarters: the first and the third. With an important game against the Lions on Friday, is it possible the team were instructed to ease up on their effort to conserve energy in the last quarter? We were flat in that last quarter. 2. Is the problem with our inability to capitalise on turnover in the back half primarily method or skill? The family has been away the last two weekends so I’ve watched more non-Melb games than usual. When other teams turn the ball over, they spread the ball, with players running past 1-2m wide of the ball holder with the effect that they spread out from the contest. It reminds me of our “running in waves” method in 2021. However, we seem to want to go in a more direct line forward rather than wide. This means we often attempt to loop the ball forward over opposition players. This “loopy technique”, if I may call it that, also seems to have undermined our handball technique in general play, with players looping their hand balls when it’s not necessary. Bring back the running in waves method, I say. Related, why do so many of our players look surprised to receive the ball? There must be confusion over the method or, alternatively, the players are so bereft of confidence that they think of the ball as a hot potato Love the pod - keep up the good work!

Wow, 74% CBA for Kozzie. Looks like his CBAs have largely come at the expense of Sparrow, suggesting the coaches are concerned about our need for more pace in the middle. I was also surprised by the player ratings for Langdon and Hunter - I thought they were both decent and didn’t expect them in the bottom four.

Following on from my question: Can the panel discuss whether there are alternative, better approaches or strategies to fully utilise the list for these matches during the season when we know our best 22 will be 10% or even 20% below their usual output because of the fixture. For example, the following players were available this week: - Hunter (who has been best 22) was available, could he not have replaced Windsor who was understandably down on his past performance? - Laurie also available, could he not have replaced a tired and indeed injured Oliver? - He’s not “best 22” in normal circumstances, but could not Schache have come in for BBB who really looked exhausted this week (and that’s not to knock his performance the past few weeks)? You get the drift … Given the importance of fitness to the outcome of games these days as well as how well everyone is drilled on our systems, I just wonder whether we could more strategically use our second string of players to manage the long season.

Watched the game on replay this evening and I thought we looked slow and indecisive from the beginning. So much so that I started wondering whether we decided to take advantage of our 4-1 start and the upcoming bye to put some extra miles into the legs during the week. I went through the Sunday and Wednesday training threads but I couldn’t find any suggestion that they were heavy sessions with extra loads. Do the stats confirm our fitness was down and, if so, do you think it was because it was their third game in 13 days or is it possible they were also assigned extra running outside of the two main training sessions this week?

Could you discuss the loss of Yze in terms of his game day role in the box and how he seemed to complement Goodie in the sense that Goodwin seems a stronger strategist than tactician and perhaps Yze a stronger tactician?

After a long hiatus over the summer (necessary to recover from last year’s disappointment), I’m now ready for the season and am more optimistic than I was two months ago. Not as bullish as I was last year—I had predicted top-2 and a GF berth last year—but confident we can make top-4 assuming an average injury run. Four questions : 1. Which team is our greatest threat this year? 2. Who do you think will be our top goal kicker and who our most reliable goal kicker (shots to goal ratio)? 3. What adjustments to our on-field and off-field load management strategy do you think we’ll make or should make to get through the long season and peak in September? 4. Finally, at what round and minimum ladder position should I consider investing in the GF guarantee? 😁 Thanks and looking foreword to another great season of the podcast!

In the past two years, we’ve taken the first practice match seriously fielding our best team for at the least the first four “quarters” and used the second match to try new players. I was unable to watch Sunday’s match but from the post-game thread it seems we used this match to try new players in new positions etc. Do you think we may have reversed our approach to this year’s practice matches and will use the Carlton match to field a stronger team and really see where we’re at?

Back up for May, not the third tall IMO.

I hope Yze has got the job and thus can focus on this game. I think it was Sanderson that mentioned that he thought Goodie needed to visit the box last week so he could more quickly see how our shallow entries were allowing their rebound game. Made me think that perhaps Yze has been distracted with interview prep etc. the past few weeks. I hope your friend is wrong Max 😬

I was bemoaning the absence of our small forwards at the end of the first quarter last week, but Kozzie was one of the first players to step up in the second quarter. I hope he has a big one and gets more reward on the score board 👍

The capital I in the account name looks suspicious, I suspect not legit

I have three questions for the panel: 1. What happened to our pressure? Finals demand pressure and so does our game style. Can we win with an average pressure of only 176 like last week and without hitting levels of 200 for at least some quarters, and from who and where on the ground do we need more pressure? 2. What was our plan to nullify their rebound off the half-back? This is critical to the way they play, but our small defensive forwards seemed to be missing in action and our entries into our forward 50 seemed very shallow particularly in the first quarter or so, enabling them to waltz it out of defence and rebound multiple times in the first quarter. If they hadn't missed some gettable set shots from these rebounds they would have been much further ahead in the first Q. 3. Where's the running in waves that we saw in previous seasons and the faster ball movement we saw at the beginning of this season including our better kicks such as Bowey, Hunter, Salem, etc. taking on the corridor? As ABG pointed out above, there were opportunities to move through the corridor and move the ball more quickly, but we often opted for the safety of moving along the boundary line and slowed down our movements into our forward 50 allowing them plenty of time to setup defensively. Do you think we lowered our risk profile too much because of the weather which didn't seem to be as wet as predicted earlier in the week? Really frustrating and emotionally draining game on many levels (I really hope Gus is okay) and thus very much looking forward to your excellent podcast. And thankfully the weather looks perfect for our game against the Blues!

By period I mean a period of time, probably a block of a 3-4 weeks. By loading I mean additional blocks of mostly aerobic exercise between matches.